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BIBLE APOLOGETICS ON ORIGINS
Part IV: Biblically Explaining The Fossil Record's Origin
  1. Introduction
    1. Since we have supplied evidence favoring creationism over evolution as to the universe's origin, we are obligated to answer the remaining questions, "Where and how and why did the fossil record originate?"
    2. We view Scripture and empirical evidence (what can be gleaned from the senses) for the answer:
  2. Biblically Explaining The Fossil Record's Origin (I am indebted to Whitcomb and Morris' The Genesis Flood; Whitcomb's The Early Earth and Luther D. Sunderland's, Darwin's Enigma.)
    1. Empirical evidence presents a problem for uniformitarian evolutionism re: the subject of the fossil record:
      1. According to Sunderland, no significant masses of fossils are being created anywhere in the world today, Op. cit., p. 111-114. He finds (Op. cit., p. 152): "The fossilized organisms were buried rapidly in catastrophic events, some of which were on a worldwide scale." Whitcomb and Morris agree with Sunderland on the presence of a catastrophe, but argue the single Noahic Flood buried these organisms.
      2. Also, many in the secular scientific community hold the earth was originally a single continent, that the current continents have formed from that original single land mass via continental drift, The Cambridge Ancient History, Volume I, Part I: Prolegomena and Prehistory, p. 7ff.
      3. Additionally, sediments in places like America's Glacier National Park contain flood sediments curved in parallel formations called folds. Such folds are not possible when the sediments are being deposited as massive thrusts necessary to form such folds would mix the solubles, forming a single sediment. Neither is are such folds possible after such sediments were hardened rock formations, for thrusting would fracture, not fold such parallel sediments. Such fold formations are possible only when the sediments are in a plastic form at the time of thrusting, cf. Whitcomb, The Early Earth, p. 66.
    2. However, the Bible contains answers for these evidences from the empirical record:
      1. Genesis 7:11 - Besides rain, the large sealed cisterns below the earth were broken up in the Flood, accounting for big pockets of rapidly-buried fossils of all forms in a variety of strata around the globe.
      2. Genesis 7:19 with 9:11, 15 - This Noahic Flood was universal according to the Bible: the highest hills were covered (Gen. 7:19), implying a great amount of water covering the earth [Note: There may not be a known adequate water source sufficient to cover the earth to the height of Mount Everest, but we explain this later!] All life perished according to Genesis 9:11 and 9:15, implying a universal deluge in keeping with the writings of Whitcomb and Morris with Sunderland's observations.
      3. Genesis 8:22 - The first mention of the four seasons occurs here. From comparing this verse with Genesis 2:5-6, it appears a change in the earth's climate arose as a result of the Noahic Flood. The ground was formerly irrigated from beneath with a mist, a fact foreign to the current world. It is possible a water vapor canopy surrounded the pre-flooded earth, creating a universal "greenhouse effect." The Noahic Flood commenced the precipitation of that water canopy coupled with the release of underground water sources that had produced the Genesis 2:5-6 "mist." Thus, the Flood was produced, exposing the earth to space so as to produce the seasons.
      4. Genesis 11:1-9 with 10:25 - God is seen dividing up the unity of humanity at Babel in Genesis 11:1-9. However, Genesis 10:25 reveals "Peleg" is so named in accord with the earth's division, and "peleg" in Hebrew is used in Scripture solely to refer to divisions of the ground that form irrigation ditches, B. D. B., Hebrew and English Lex., p. 811 with Kittel's, Biblia Hebraica, p. 14. Thus, after dividing up the people geographically via the division of languages, God sought to keep them apart by splitting up a single land mass into continents. Thus, in Peleg's lifetime, the continents had sufficiently moved from each other to divide mankind! [Also, this would explain why extremely tall mountains like Mount Everest would have been covered during the Flood, for they could easily have been formed by thrusting and folds during continental drift AFTER the Noahic Flood!]
Lesson: Scripture presents the Noahic Flood as the cause of massive fossilization of plant and animal life. The formations of curved, parallel rock strata can be explained in terms of post-Noahic flood continental drift shifts achieved when the earth's Naohic Flood strata were still in plastic forms. This is defensible from Genesis where uniformitarian evolutionism has no such explanation.